Sunshine Tea and Refrigerator Tea

KirstenMay 5, 2010

I thought I had blogged about this already but it must have been my old blog that got deleted. This is a great way to save some energy this summer. Iced tea is, of course, a summer staple but I never really liked having to boil water, wait for it to cool enough to put in the fridge and then wait for it to chill. Here you can skip two steps and harness the power of the sun or time. When I was young, we used to make sunshine tea in those old four liter milk jars and then pour it into plastic juice jugs. Now I make it in a one liter jar that fits in my fridge. My fridge won’t hold four liters of anything.

Put your tea bag and any other optional ingredients in your drink container and fill with water. Put out in direct sunlight for 1-3 hours depending on the size of your container and the strength of your tea leaves. Put the container in the fridge or transfer to smaller containers – I used to fill reused 500mL drink bottles with iced tea in advance for busy mornings.

Refrigerator Tea

1 drink container (plastic seems to be okay) – widely available in Japanese grocery stores
1 tea bag per liter (some drink containers come with mesh so you can use loose tea)
water
Optional: lemon/orange slices, spices, you can try sugar but it doesn’t mix well

Put your tea bag and any other optional ingredients in your drink container and fill with water. Put in the refrigerator for 6-12 hours depending on the size of your container and the strength of your tea leaves. I often put it in the fridge before bed and wake up to fresh tea.

Container: Last year I started seeing containers that lay on their sides to fit in Japanese refrigerators. I got the above one at Muji last year and I think I have seen them again this year. They seem to be widely available in the kitchen sections of most stores.